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Spain enters last phase of switchover
Iñaki Ferreras ©RapidTVNews | 09-03-2010
Spain's digital switchover will take place on April 2 rather than the originally timetabled April 3. Switchover will affect some 30 million people. The autonomous region of Madrid, with 6 million people, will switch off analogue signals today, March 10.
Also today, the last analogue transmitters will progressively start switching off their transmissions. The national government's forecasts are to be able to end analogue broadcasts between today and March 30. But taking account of the complexity of this last phase, in which the biggest capitals are included such as Madrid and Barcelona, in some places analogue switch off will have to wait until the very last minute, according to José Antonio Quintela director of the National Office for the Transition to DTT.
"We're talking about projects in which there are more than 300 transmission centres working. We can't press a button and switch off all the transmitters at the same time," he said.
Despite efforts made by the country's government and the different regional governments there will be some people across the country who won't be able to get DTT after analogue switch over if the demand to adapt the collective antennas doesn't increase. This may pose a problem for telecommunication installers because they won't be able to do the whole remaining work in only one month.
In the meantime, box manufacturers are getting ready for very high demand over the last few days before analogue switch off.
"In spite of all the messages launched by different actors of this market there will be very many people who'll realise their TV sets don't work from April 2,” according to the representative of the manufacturer Siemens Gigaset Sergio Talaweritz in declarations to the news agency Europa Press.
According to Talaweritz, the sales of boxes grew over the last and the first four days after analogue switch offs in other countries. Nevertheless he was convinced there'll be enough boxes for all. "The problem won't be this but the number of people not realizing they will have to buy one to carry on watching television," he declared.
© Rapid TV News 2010
